Zootopia 2 - A Long Awaited Sequel that Was Still As Entertaining as the Original

When this movie was made available for advance ticket sale last week, my wife and I decided to buy tickets for its earliest show yesterday cause we were free on that day. We saw it in one of the cinemas not far from our home and pretty easy to access. Without further ado, here's more on the film.

Brief Story Line

Story was set not too far after the events of the first movie where Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin - Once Upon a Time TV series, He's Just Not That Into You etc) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman - Carry On, Game Night etc) had been partner in Zootopia PD for a week, though they seemed to be a bit incompatible due to their different characteristics. After a sting operation on a smuggling ring that created lots of commotion, Police Chief Bogo (Idris Elba - Heads of State, Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw etc) ordered Judy and Nick to attend therapy session before working on other cases. 

Judy suspected that a reptile who had never been in Zootopia for a very long time, might be involved in the smuggling case and was adamant to look into it despite the discontent from Nick. During a public event, Judy befriended Pawbert (Andy Samberg - Hotel Transylvania: Transformation, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping etc), the direct descendant of the famous Lynxley family. As Judy & Nick dig deeper, they found that there was indeed a snake later on revealed to be Gary (Ke Huy Quan - Kungfu Panda 4, Love Hurts etc) who had devised a plan that might endanger Zootopia.  Judy & Nick had no choice but to cooperate with podcaster Nibbles Mapplestick (Fortune Feimster - Family Switch, You're Cordially Invited etc) who had vast knowledge of reptile in order to capture Gary. 

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Well that was fun. The last time we saw the original movie was back in 2016, quite a long time between sequels which was surprising considering it made a huge profit then. My wife and I did not really remember the story of that one but somehow we did not consider re-watching it before seeing this. Anyway I decided to just read the detailed premise of the first movie to refresh my memory. Turned out that when we saw the sequel, aside from few characters from the original, there was not too much connection that would make us having difficulty to understand the story or better appreciate it. With brief scene to remind us in the beginning plus brand new story and focused on different characters, made this one easy to enjoy.

The story was pretty well told by the same directors as the previous movie, i.e. Jared Bush and Byron Howard who also directed the critical and commercial successful Encanto. Jared Bush was credited as the writer too, which should not come as a shock considering he had experience in writing movies like Moana and its sequel. From what I read, this film was highly praised by critics which I kind of agreed as it had fantastic animation, wonderful story and fascinating characters. I loved the relationship and banter between Judy and Nick, plus their interaction with the others. To my surprise there was a twist that I did not see coming while my wife was able to guess it even from the early stage. 

The movie had plenty of exciting moments where we were fully absorbed with the intensity. We did not realize it until they were finished and I heard my wife breathed sigh of relief, like the car chase, the ultimate fight with bad guys and that scene in the swamp that I thought was very intense (you would know what I meant if you had seen this). The film had duration of 108 minutes which was sufficient to cover the whole story. It included a closing scene with the nice song titled Zoo sung by Shakira and a post end credit scene which we believed was a teaser for next sequel (though both of us were unsure the significance). 

Shakira was not the only singer who played a character in this film since there was also Ed Sheeran. In addition to the ones I mentioned above, the large ensemble cast included Patrick Warburton (Rules of Engagement TV series etc) as Winddancer the new Mayor of Zootopia, David Strathairn (Where the Crawdads Sing etc) as Milton Lynxley, Macaulay Culkin (Home Alone etc) & Brenda Song (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody TV series etc) as Pawbert's siblings Cattrick & Kitty respectively, Danny Trejo (Minions: The Rise of Gru etc) as Jesus the basilisk, Michelle Gomez (The Flight Attendant TV series etc) as Captain Hoggbottom and so many others that will fill my blog just to name all of them. Few of the cast from original movie also appeared here in support roles or minor capacity. 

Overall my wife and I had wonderful time watching this one. It was fun and had plenty of nice humor plus interesting to see the relationship between Judy & Nick. It was still heartwarming to watch the two of them, but somehow I got a bit of feeling that the first film was deeper with Judy's dream of becoming a police and Nick's journey of becoming good from the stereotype of sleazy guy, while in this sequel it seemed to focus more on their relationship  Nevertheless it was still a joy to watch and who knows, it could also be as successful commercially as the original. So if you love the first movie, I believe you would like this like my wife and I did. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars